


Shoulder the Weight

by bzarcher



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Armor, Feels, Legacies, Memories, Podfic Welcome, Reaper76 if you squint reallllly hard, Regrets, Sometimes even Grandpa needs Dad!76, old soldiers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-19
Updated: 2016-08-19
Packaged: 2018-08-09 19:36:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7814452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bzarcher/pseuds/bzarcher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Reinhardt's armor is badly damaged during a mission to Eichenwalde, he doesn't want to listen to any suggestions about a possible replacement.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shoulder the Weight

“Nein.”

“Reinhardt, please, be reasonable.”

“No. I am sorry, my friends. I cannot do what you are asking.”

“Reinhardt, this makes far more sense! Your Crusader is virtually beyond repair –“

“Brigitte has brought it back from worse. Surely you collected enough…salvage…to make it serviceable again?”

“Ditt jävla ålahuvud! That could take weeks to sort through!”

“THEN I WILL WAIT WEEKS!”

“Reinhardt –“

“GENUG! I am done with this. You have my final answer.”

* * *

There was a painful irony, Reinhardt Wilhelm thought, in leaving an argument to clear your head, only to find yourself at the cause of the dispute.

The hangar at Watchpoint: Gibraltar always smelled of hot metal, oil, and jet exhaust. His nose wrinkled as the aroma reminded him all too well of his last battle. Thankfully, though, it was empty, allowing him some quiet.

They were not wrong about the state of his suit. His Crusader had stood fast against Talon’s attempt to pillage Eichenwalde, but at great cost. The smell of burnt wiring and melted plastics had rankled in his helmet despite his attempts to vent the suit’s air circulation, and on their withdrawal to the shuttle the power assist servos in his legs had failed entirely, leaving his legs locked and immobile. He could only imagine the embarrassing sight he had made when Fareeha and Zaryanova had carried him into the craft, or when Torbjörn had been forced to cut him out of the armor after finding the emergency releases had fused shut.

Still…he looked at the wall where Balderich’s suit stood empty, and could not imagine himself within it.

Someone had taken pains to clean away the overgrowth that had begun to cover it, and he felt shamed for not coming to attend the suit himself. He had been a Crusader. It should have been his responsibility – no, his _duty_ – to see to it.

The tabard’s color had faded over the years it had sat in the castle’s keep, a silent memorial to all his fallen brothers, but the golden trim of the suit gleamed in the lights, his distorted face staring back at him as he swept his gaze over it.

He couldn’t say how long he stood there, lost in memory, before the sound of a throat being cleared returned him to the present.

“Quite a long time since I saw this in person,” Soldier: 76 said, his graveled voice soft beneath his mask as he walked over, standing to his side.

“Mm.” Reinhardt still felt raw, but his anger had cooled. Perhaps if he said little, the former Strike Commander would take the hint and leave him be.

“I heard there was a bit of an argument earlier. God help anyone who asks Angela for some bandages today.”

Reinhardt couldn’t help but chuckle a bit at that. Yes, the good Doctor wasn’t someone to trifle with when her back was up. “And Torbjörn?”

The soldier snorted, shaking his head. “God help anyone who goes into his workshop on any given day of the week.”

“Hah. That is so.”

“Neither of them would say what caused the fight…but I think I have a pretty decent idea.”

“Then you know I am not going to wear it.”

There was a soft hiss and click as the solider removed his mask, tucking it into his jacket pocket, his voice lightening as Jack Morrison spoke. “I know that when you’ve made up your mind, it takes quite a lot to change it.”

Reinhardt grimaced, turning his head slightly so that his friend’s gaze would only see his blinded eye.  “I have never told you about the day Balderich asked me to join Project Barbarossa.”

Morrison hummed thoughtfully at the seeming non sequitur.  “Of all the stories you’ve told over the years, I can’t recall hearing that one.”

“That’s because I said no.”

He could almost hear Morrison’s eyebrows rise when he replied. “That surprises me.”

“It was early in the Omnic Crisis. I was still a young officer in the Bundeswehr. I believed I would do more good fighting on the front lines than trying to help him in a ‘technology testing division’.” Reinhardt’s eye turned back to the armor, but his gaze turned distant. “I will always remember what he said: ‘Anyone can hold a gun. It takes something more to inspire our people.’”

“So that’s why the Crusader armor never mounted any ranged weapons?”

“Ja. The original design draft was very different before Balderich was given permission to modify it. He felt that we had to become symbols – the knights who protected our people from danger. Cannon and missiles didn’t accomplish that. The Crusader was still a military weapon, of course, but he made it…made us…something more.”

“I’d always wondered about that. Seems to me those days made quite an impression on you.”

“It has been the standard I have held myself to ever since,” the larger man admitted. “From the day I began helping to test the armor, and in the training of our charges as he created the Crusader division. I do everything I can to hold myself to that…but I have not always been successful.”

“I remember when we relieved the Panzergrenadiers at Eichenwalde. How you looked after they told you Balderich had given his life in the counterattack.”

“I should have been there, Jack.”

“You were leading our strike at Stuttgart. When you hit them with the weight of Overwatch behind you, it broke the back of the Omnic lines. If it hadn’t been for that, the city would have fallen, and the Omnics would have turned and crushed the units holding out in the castle.”

“You can’t know that. We could have performed a simultaneous drop, as Reyes wanted. There was a good chance…”

“No, Reinhardt. I had Athena run projections for almost two days after we got back to Geneva, because I felt…I had to know.  Every simulation where Overwatch split their forces ended in defeat. We had to hit them with our full force – anything less would have been wasted, and made his sacrifice in vain.”

Reinhardt looked away. “I want to believe that. Truly. But in my heart...” He sighed. “Every other Crusader stood with him that day. Our finest hour…and when he fell, I was not at his side.”

“You helped turn the tide of the war that day. Once we broke the siege, and destroyed the supply lines from the Munich Omnium to the front, it allowed us to finally go on the offensive.”

Reinhardt was silent, but for his heart churning as he attempted to put his feelings into words. Instead, Morrison walked to the suit, gently tracing a hand over the wings of the eagle that had been worked into the breastplate, then looked back to him.

“Balderich von Adler was an inspiration to many, in life and death. He would be proud at how you’ve upheld his legacy, but I think he would agree that you’re asking the wrong question right now.”

Reinhardt looked down into Morrison’s eyes, his brows knitting in confusion. “I don’t think I understand you.”

Morrison’s face was still and serious, his voice filled with a certain energy that reminded him of days long past. “You’re asking if you’re worthy to wear that armor. You don’t feel you have the right because you weren’t there when he fell – and because you don’t feel you lived up to the standards he set for you. But you should be asking yourself – who inspired Balderich?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

Morrison reached into his pocket, and returned the mask to his face, his voice dipping lower as he settled into the Soldier’s persona. “Think about it for a while.”

Reinhardt was silent as the Solider walked away, mulling that over, then turned, calling out one last question. “Do you ever feel the weight of what we’ve lost? Of those who we left behind?”

He couldn’t find Morrison’s eyes through the glowing visor, but he could see his Adam’s apple work for a moment before his answer, voice just barely loud enough to be heard across the empty room. “Every day.”

Then, he squared his shoulders, turned on his heel, and left, leaving Reinhardt alone with the armor once again.

His fingers caressed the helmet’s armored face, his eye searching the dark visor. “For many years, I wondered why you sent me to Overwatch, the day they asked for a member of the Crusaders to join them. I thought it should have been you, Balderich. I was honored – but I don’t ever think I understood.”

The armor was silent, but some part of him heard his old mentor chuckle, just as he had the day he’d said he was better off leading men in the field than standing around in a laboratory. “ _That is why you are exactly what I needed, Wilhelm.”_

Reinhardt closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and slowly let it out through his nose.

“Perhaps now, I do.”

* * *

Dinner was a strained affair in the Watchpoint. Mercy’s temper had cooled, finally, but the usually gregarious doctor had barely spoken more than a handful of words as she mechanically ate her salad, and Torbjörn had reached a new level of surliness as he pushed meatballs and noodles around his plate.

No one was willing to ask about the noticeably absent member of their family, until the sound of massive footsteps could be heard approaching the doors.

McCree looked up from where he’d been dishing out spaghetti, his eyebrows raising under his hat. “He don’t normally wear his armor to chow call.”

Torbjörn blinked, looking to the door and back to the gunslinger, his voice still colored with irritation. “He doesn’t have armor to wear!”

Angela looked up as well, her eyes filled with surprise. “ _Ausser wenn…_ ”

Massive armored hands flung the double doors open, and somehow, despite the suit they’d recovered from Eichenwalde being even bulkier than his standard armor, Reinhardt smoothly popped through the doorway, so quick and graceful that it was almost like a magic trick.

“My friends,” the German boomed, his voice slightly filtered by the suit, “I owe all of you some apologies. I have behaved poorly, and I am sorry for it.”

As Angela left her seat to hug his armored waist, and Hana cried something about “basedlord Grandpa!” and took pictures with her phone, Reinhardt looked to where Soldier: 76 sat, his visor in place but mask removed to allow him to eat, and made sure they had eye contact before lowering his head in a slow, grateful nod.

The soldier didn’t reply in words, but the slight tilt of his head was enough to get the message across. And despite the visor, he’d almost swear the man had winked.

**Author's Note:**

> After the Balderich legendary skin was announced (and go google it if you haven't seen it, because it is BADASS), I had this idea about how Reinhardt would react to the suggestion of wearing the armor of a man he considered his mentor, and what might lead to it. Hope everyone enjoyed this!
> 
> A few translations (and forgive me if I got these wrong - I was going off very rusty memories and some google-fu...)
> 
> Nein. = "No." 
> 
> Ditt jävla ålahuvud! = "You damn eel head!" (Basically Swedish slang for calling someone an idiot)
> 
> Genug! = "Enough!"
> 
> Ja = "Yes"
> 
> "Ausser wenn..." = "Unless..."


End file.
